‘Megaton Rainfall’ Delayed Until mid-October on PSVR and PS4

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Described as the ‘ultimate superhero experience’, Megaton Rainfall tasks the player with preventing a global alien invasion, with a full-scale Earth as the destructible backdrop. The game, which was supposed to launch today, is unfortunately delayed for 3 more weeks for PSVR and PS4, now slated to launch October 17th.

Update (09/26/17): Megaton Rainfall was supposed to launch today, but according to the developers, it’s now delayed until October 17 for PS4 and PSVR. As for the PC version, the build on Steam is still set to launch October 26th, but doesn’t advertise either HTC Vive or Oculus Rift support. There’s no telling at this point if the game will remain a PSVR exclusive or if it will eventually head to other headsets.

Original Article (08/23/17): In an unfortunate turn of events, it appears the Earth is scheduled for demolition. In Megaton Rainfall’s action-packed gameplay trailer, scenes reminiscent of various The War of the Worlds-inspired works show environmental destruction on an enormous scale, as the player flies around at supersonic speeds, battling a global attack using superpowers apparently as dangerous to humanity as the alien presence itself.

Del Cerro describes the main character as “an indestructible superbeing” in a recent entry on the PlayStation Blog, who gains abilities as the game progresses. The player can only roam the entire Earth at the beginning of the game, but your powers will increase, letting you “fly to the Moon or walk across the surface of the Sun.” As a result, you can cause just as much accidental damage as the aliens.

“Your basic shot destroys entire buildings every time you miss your target,” writes Del Cerro. “Your telekinesis can prevent enemy grenades from damaging the humans, but it can also send vehicles careening down the street. The gigaton blast can destroy an enemy mothership… or the entire city.”

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Image courtesy Pentadimensional Games

Image courtesy Pentadimensional Games

Image courtesy Pentadimensional Games

Image courtesy Pentadimensional Games

This remarkable planet scale and destructibility is achieved with a custom engine designed to handle ‘seamless rendering’, with ‘semi-procedurally generated’ cities. While the game claims to feature a ‘real-scale Earth’, Del Carro has explained that players shouldn’t expect accurate landmarks. “Keep in mind it’s not like Google Earth,” he answers in the PlayStation Blog comments. “You won’t find your home or lots of recognizable places.”

Megaton Rainfall has been in development since 2012, taking a huge jump in presentation quality since its early footage. As noted on the game’s own blog, considerable effort has gone into optimising the game for VR, both in terms of holding a solid 60fps on PS4, and the development of six different control interfaces. Flying around at supersonic speeds in first person without a cockpit to ‘ground’ the player in VR—not to mention all the ‘strafing’ seen in the trailer—sounds like a strong recipe for nausea, but the variety of control options hopefully means that players will be able to find one that’s comfortable. According to another of Del Carro’s answers on the PlayStation Blog, the default controls will be “right stick to do quick turns”, which should be comfortable for those most prone to VR sickness.

What platform is the trailer taken from I wonder? I’ll certainly check out the reviews for this one when it’s released, could be excellent – but at the moment it looks a little bit too good to be true to me. All the falling debris and stuff in some shots – if it arrives looking like that during gameplay I’ll be astounded. Pleasantly astounded.

drd7of14

It’s likely taken from PC or PS4, but without the VR headset. The game supports non-VR as well, so until we see how the visuals compare from within the headset, I’d imagine it’s not going to look quite as good as this visually.

That being said, it still looks like a whole lot of fun. This game has been one of my most anticipated VR games, cause flying is so weird feeling in a good way in VR. Add in Superman-like power, flying to space, and Alien invasions…They’ve definitely bought my undivided attention. Hopefully this game can deliver. We’ll know in about a month.

I dunno if it’s possible to get such scale and effects in VR with present technology. But then again, I’m not a dev or engineer.

Martin K.

Hi. I played the game yesterday at GamesCom and it does indeed look pretty sweet!
It looked a little more blurry than in the trailer of course, but the destruction elements were amazing and the sense of speed when flying (from the orbit down to earth) is totally gripping.
The only problem I had were with massive black bars when flying close to objects. (Not shown in the trailer)

This does look amazing, don’t know how they manage scale, but what I think is a bit of a shame is that they tried to go for a realistic look rather than a stylized look which given current graphic limitations would have worked better.